Wells’ Riley Dempsey looks for space in the third quarter, Tuesday. ALEX SPONSELLER/ Journal Tribune
Wells entered the game at 7-3, good for third place in the conference. The Clippers were 8-2 and locked into the second spot, but played at a much higher level than host Wells.
Both teams came out at a fast pace in the first period, however the Clippers carved a 23-15 lead after one. Yarmouth continued to roll in the second, outscoring the Warriors 29-10 and taking a big 52-25 lead into the halftime break.
“That is what we aspire to be — offensively, they get the ball out and go. That’s something we have worked on all season and we don’t do it half as good as they do, bottom line,” said Wells coach Troy Brown. “They hit some shots early in our zone, and when a team goes up 10, 15 then the shots go in a little more easily. We didn’t do a good job of finding men and talking on defense.”
The Warriors gained some traction in the opening minutes of the third, led by forward Deandre Woods who went on to score nine points in the quarter. Wells managed to outpace the Clippers 23-21 in the quarter, but where unable to close the gap much more as Yarmouth would close out the game with an 18-point fourth.
Yarmouth’s Gibson Harnett led the Clippers with a game-high 23 points, while Alek Medenica added 19 and Igor Nikolic 14. Woods led the Warriors with 20 points while Dewey and Cameron Cousins each recorded 11.
Brown was pleased with his team’s performance in the second half, but felt that the Warriors failed to play defense consistently.
“(Yarmouth is) obviously tough to defend also with their two bigs, they do a good job of getting to the rim. I think we did a good job early of getting back into the game when they kind of took off on us, Tyler (Dewey) and Deandre were getting inside and getting some shots early in the third. We just weren’t good enough to get any stops, after that we pretty much played through a stalemate.”
Yarmouth entered the contest with a much bigger lineup than Wells, however, Brown was impressed with the Clippers’ sharp shooting.
“I knew they were big, I knew they were good. I just didn’t realize they could make shots like that from the outside and that was the killer,” said Brown. “I thought we could play the zone more so than man-to-man, but we obviously couldn’t, they didn’t miss on that.”
The two teams will meet later in the season in Yarmouth, and could likely face off again in the postseason. Brown hopes that his team can learn from Tuesday’s loss, and hopefully close the gap between its conference rival.
“We will watch film tomorrow, we watch film to see what we did wrong and to see what we aspire to be,” said Brown. “We want to be that team, we will see them later this season and that will be a good measuring stick to see if we have made any improvements from tonight until then.”
— Associate Sports Editor Alex Sponseller can be reached at asponseller@journaltribune.com or at 282-1535 ext. 323. Follow the Journal Tribune Sports Department on Twitter @JournalTsports.
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